


Ciphers

by Sholio



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: Codes & Ciphers, Developing Friendships, Epistolary, Future Fic, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26092951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Once a spy, always a spy, even in retirement. Set post-series, contains spoilers.
Relationships: Edmund Hewlett & Abraham Woodhull
Comments: 11
Kudos: 24





	Ciphers

The letter arrived three years after the end of the war —delivered by one of Caleb's privateer friends, postal service in the new republic still being a matter of some uncertainty, let alone between nations still in the early stages of a fragile truce. It was addressed simply to _Abraham Woodhull, Setauket,_ written in a clerk-neat hand that Abraham recognized instantly; he had copied and read too many documents in that hand not to recognize it on sight, even if he hadn't also recognized the stamp pressed into the sealing wax.

He took a slow breath and sat on a hitching rail outside Dejong's tavern to read it, looking out over the harbor. The letter had been sitting at the tavern for two days; it could have waited until he was home, and Mary wouldn't appreciate being kept out of it. But he needed to know what it said before he decided whether to tell her at all.

When he unfolded the paper, a second paper slipped out. It was a bank draft, drawn on the Bank of England. The masterfully neat handwriting continued within.

_Dear Abraham,_

_I take this opportunity to write these few lines to you, sending salutations and the sincere hope that this letter will find you and your wife and son in good health._

_You asked me once for a loan, a favor that I regretted I was, at the time, unable to grant. But circumstances do change, as you know, and I find myself better fortune-favored than I was in those days. Consequently the paper you will find enclosed is not a loan, but a gift, to you and your family._

_You may have to travel to York City to find a bank or a merchant that will honour it, but I am told that the monetary relationship in private enterprise between our two nations remains healthy, so it seemed preferable to sending hard currency across an ocean._

_If you do not want it, tear it up._

_Yours respectfully,  
Edmund Hewlett_

"You son of a bitch," Abe murmured. He couldn't help smiling slightly, at the gall of the man if nothing else, and there was some part of him that would have balled up the draft and dropped it in the harbor.

But ... the amount _wasn't_ that much, and he found himself wondering if it was all Hewlett could spare, or carefully calculated to stand the least chance of wounding Abe's pride.

And it would help fill the gap that would normally have been paid for in store credit and favors to neighboring hay farms until the crop came in.

If nothing else, Mary would never forgive him if he let perfectly good money slip through their fingers out of misplaced pride.

He read the letter again carefully, tilted it to the light, found himself counting words before he rolled his eyes at his own tendency, even now, to seek coded meanings in ordinary correspondence. Robert sometimes sent him coded letters just to keep a hand in, but Robert was like that. Hewlett was ... more straightforward, less twisty, or at least less reliably twisty. 

It was possible that this was an attempt to draw him into some brand new game. Though retired from both military service and the spy game, Hewlett might still be friendly with the British intelligence service. Abe didn't doubt that spying was alive and well between their countries.

But in the end, he took the letter and the draft home to Mary.

***

It was winter when he wrote back, during the long gray days when farm work had dwindled to a slow routine that left plenty of downtime for all manner of long deferred projects: mending harness, building furniture, updating the farm's account books ... and letter-writing.

_Dear Mr. Hewlett,_

_We received your letter and generous gift this summer past, and as I take up my pen to write this reply, I hope these words will find you in good health. Mary and I are well. She bore a daughter last winter whose name is Alice and between the two children we are kept busy._

He stopped there, and idly blotted the quill's tip while he thought. When he wrote to Ben or Robert or Anna, he wrote of the doings of the farm and the children's small milestones, and updated his childhood friends on who had left or died or married among those they might remember in Setauket. But what would Hewlett care for any of that?

They had nothing to say to each other. They never had. The only thing they'd ever really had in common was an affection for Anna and a desire to see Simcoe dead, and occasionally each other as well. He doubted if Hewlett expected a reply back. He could imagine the man ticking off the letter and bank draft in a ledger, cancelling what Hewlett must have considered some sort of unpaid debt for Abe's gift of Whitehall — crossed off and done, a book of the past closed and put away.

And then Abe smiled. He had never really been able to resist quietly tweaking the uptight and duty-bound; it was one of the reasons why he hadn't gotten along with his father for so long, even before politics came between them.

Paper was too dear to waste (strange, now, to think how he'd squandered the precious sheets in his youth at Whitehall), so he laid the page aside unchanged while he pondered exactly how to proceed with what he had in mind. It took him several days of thinking, planning it out, while he chopped firewood, fed the horses and chickens and milk cow, patched the roof, played with the children by the fire, and occasionally figured simple ciphers on the slate they were using to teach Thomas his letters.

It would have to be something simple, he thought, because Hewlett wouldn't be looking for it, and Hewlett wasn't a naturally suspicious person; Hewlett hadn't had the temperament of a spy even when he _was_ a spy. So, simple then — something an ordinary person could figure out, if they were clever, even if they didn't expect to find a code there.

_My son Thomas, who I know you remember, has shown some interest in astronomy, which I recall was a specific interest of yours as well. Mary and I know little about it. If there is a particular book on the topic you can recommend, could you inform us of its title, that we might look into acquiring it for him?_

_Yours,  
Abraham Woodhull._

Then he went back through from the beginning and added a tiny ink dot, a barest brush of the tip of the pen, beside certain letters: hidden beneath the crosstick of a T, within the full loop of an A, until he had picked out the message he intended.

_I see you are bored. Miss the spy's life already?_

Come spring, he found passage for the letter with a whaler going north, courtesy once again of Caleb's contacts.

***

The reply came unexpectedly soon — before winter — and it came delivered by the hand of Caleb himself. He arrived at the Woodhull farm on a brilliantly clear autumn day, waving a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.

"And I'll have you know it's been in me boat for a week, ever since Zack Turner passed it off to me — you remember him, Woody, married Harriet Jenkins from down Rocky Point way? I hope you notice and appreciate that your package is unmolested and unopened ... though I have to say, seeing you ship direct on the London trade, cutting out the middleman like this — it wounds me. It does."

"You look deeply wounded indeed," Abe said, giving him a playful shove. "Anyway, I thought you were straight now, a proper lawman and all."

"All the more reason to intercept contraband," Caleb said piously, and reached for it.

"It's not contraband! Hands off!"

The package had the weight and heft of a book, and the tidy handwriting on the outside of the package was just as unmistakable as the last time. _Did he actually send us a book on astronomy?_

"Caleb Brewster!" Mary declared, coming out of the house, and dropped her basket of laundry to give him a hug. "I'd offer you a drink, if we had any, but it's well water or nothing these days. Coffee and tea are so dear since the war, and there isn't a lemon to be had on the entire island."

"Well, now, that's more like it. Not that you heard it here, but there's plenty of quality tea coming down from Canada at reasonable prices, coffee to be had at slightly less reasonable but regrettably necessary prices. In fact ..." He reached inside the leather bag on a cord slung over his shoulder. "A gift for the lovely hostess."

"Is that coffee I smell?" Abe said. "Caleb, I could kiss you. But I'll let Mary do it."

In the house, over coffee and the leftovers of one of Mary's fruit crumbles, they unwrapped the package. It was indeed a book, leatherbound and scuffed, accompanied by a note in Hewlett's precise handwriting.

_Dear Abraham,_

_Please find enclosed a book for your son Thomas. I expect he is too young for Lalande's Abrégé D'astronomie, and also likely unable to read French fluently enough to fully appreciate it. I commend to your keeping, then, this rather timeworn collection of Herschel's lectures on the astronomical construction of the heavens, which, while lacking in the most recent discoveries, should provide a good basic introduction to the topic._

_I hope this missive finds you well and you must forgive me for not writing more. I have secured a courier for this package and must send it off immediately._

_Respectfully yours,  
Edmund Hewlett_

"Does he know how old Thomas is?" Mary asked, reading over his shoulder. She looked over at their son, who was crouched in the sunshine just outside the open doorway, ranging toy soldiers in neat rows to menace each other over an elaborate and complex battlefield he had created with pieces of stovewood.

"I doubt it." Abe turned the letter around, upside down, and then examined it from the back. "Do either of you see a hidden code in this?"

"What makes you think there is one?" Mary asked. "There's nothing in the letter to say that he noticed yours."

"He's not going to come out and _say_ it. That's not how codes work."

Caleb huffed out a laugh. "Give it here."

They pored over the letter, held it up to the light, and Caleb even tried holding it over a candle to see if anything was revealed until it began to smoke and Mary snatched it away.

"Wait," Abe said, picking up the book. "There might be something in here."

There was, but it took them a while to find it, and Mary had to go tend to a fussing Alice in the meantime. There was a small pencil mark at the bottom of some pages, and the tops of others. After some lively debate and a lot of figuring with Thomas's slate, they managed to decode a couple of words and figured out that the marks at the top of the page indicated the first letter in the line they were next to; those at the bottom, the last.

_I hope you are pleased with yourself, Abraham: you've made me deface a book. Do not squander its sacrifice by failing to discover this message. As for my own state of boredom, look to yourself first._

"Why didn't we ever recruit this guy during the war?" Caleb asked.

"Because he worked for the other side?"

"Yeah, that'd be a good reason."

Abe reached for the slate.

"Abraham Woodhull," Mary said through the open bedroom door, where she was standing with Alice in her arms, "do not even _think_ of devising a spy code until you've brought in the animals for the night."

A few minutes later, as they drove the cows to the barn with Thomas's enthusiastic but inexpert help, Caleb said, "I didn't want to speak up in front of the missus." He lowered his voice and waited to speak again until Thomas ran off to fill a bucket at the well. "But you be _careful_ with this, friend."

Abe cupped his hand to his ear and made a great show of looking around in the clear westering light. "I'm sorry, what was that? Where is Caleb Brewster and what have you done with him?"

"Oh, you laugh now," Caleb said, tucking his thumbs into his belt. "But it'd be a raw turn to make it safe through the war and then get yourself hanged for a traitor because you couldn't resist twitting an old adversary, don't you think?"

"Look who's talking; I know you're still running goods through your own blockade on whaleboats."

"Yeah, I get it, nobody who was crooked is ever truly straight," Caleb said. "But smuggling is no hanging offense, at least not these days."

"We both get coded letters from Robert."

" _Robert_ isn't in England."

He was right, and Abe sobered. He couldn't even be sure how sincere Hewlett was, whether the man really had gone spy in more than just title this time.

But ... no; Hewlett knew the identity of Samuel Culper, and had done nothing to break confidence through the years. If he wanted to betray them, he could have done it a hundred times over. Men changed, and Hewlett had changed tremendously since Abe had first met him; given further changes, Abe could imagine the man selling them out directly, or using the letters to fish for information. What he couldn't see was Hewlett playing the kind of deliberately cruel, long con game that Caleb was suggesting. People changed, but they didn't change that much.

"I'll be careful," he said. "Trust me. I got through the war without putting my head in a noose, didn't I?"

"Yeah, well, just keep in mind it's Mary's head in the noose too. And Thomas, and Alice —"

"I get it, I get it. I'm not going to do anything stupid, Caleb."

"Really? That'd be a first, then," Caleb muttered.

But they turned the conversation to other, lighter topics, and kept it there throughout supper and the long candlelit conversation that followed, a pleasant and sometimes boisterous echo of older days. After Caleb eventually rolled up in a borrowed blanket in front of the fire and Mary went to bed, Abe sat up at his desk with a low-burning candle, meticulously rubbing out the pencil marks on the edges of the book's pages. Because Caleb was _right,_ damn it. They couldn't afford the risk.

As he flipped through the book checking for stray pencil marks, it fell open to the flyleaf. There was a handwritten inscription there, the ink worn and faded as if the cover had been frequently opened and closed. 

_Edmund - The new book. Do not judge me harshly if some of the material has become outdated due to the rapid pace of change in our understanding of the celestial spheres. I look forward to discussing it with you. - Wm. Herschel_

It was _his_ copy, Abe thought, staring at it. A book that he'd probably brought with him to Whitehall when he arrived, and then taken all the way back across the ocean with him. Not a used copy obtained from a dealer, as its battered condition suggested, but a book that was treasured, that had been read and reread until it was almost in need of rebinding. A book he had chosen to give to Abe's son, because Hewlett — in the mental state he'd been in when Abe had talked to him in New York, and apparently was still — did not seem to think he'd have an opportunity for children of his own.

Abe rubbed his aching eyes. Sleep beckoned. But if he wrote a letter tonight, Caleb could take it with him, perhaps even get it on an eastbound ship before winter locked the harbor in its grip. He lit another candle from the stub of the first, and reached for paper and inkwell. 

_Dear Mr. Hewlett,_

_We hope this letter finds you well. Our sincere thanks for the book. It is very thoughtful and will be a great benefit to Thomas as he continues his education._

_The children are both growing well. Alice is the absolute image of her mother._

Well, why not continue, he thought; it would be a waste of paper to scribble off a short note of thanks and leave most of the page blank, so why _not_ write the kind of chatty letter about the goings-on back home that he sent regularly to the Tallmadges and the Strongs? Hewlett would probably go out of his mind looking for codes where there were none.

So he wrote about the healthy cabbage crop, about the new calf and the difficulty in obtaining supplies to put a much-needed new roof on the barn, about Thomas's ambitions to be not just an astronomer but also a lawyer, a sailor, and most recently a tiger tamer in India, thanks to a particularly fanciful story Caleb had unfortunately told him.

 _I hope all is well with you,_ he wrote, and realized as he did so that he actually meant it. _I do not know if there is anyone here you care to write to, but if you would like, you can send the letters to me and I will see they make it to their destination._

_Yours,  
Abraham Woodhull_

It occurred to him as he blew on the ink to dry it that Hewlett would most likely be having the exact same set of doubts about Abe's letters that Abe had been entertaining about his. And probably with more reason, Abe having actively spied on him throughout most of the time he'd been at Whitehall.

But a little dash of uncertainty, a puzzle to solve, made life more interesting, sometimes.

To that end, Abe added a little drawing at the corner. He wasn't much of an artist, but he thought he could manage a credible or at least vaguely recognizable lobster. It was waving cheerfully.

Let the former major make what he would of that, derive whatever message he would. At the very least he was guaranteed hours of frustration. Abe smiled to himself, folded the letter neatly, and tucked it into Caleb's bag.

**Author's Note:**

> ... so yeah, I wished Edmund had stayed at Whitehall. But even though he didn't, there are a few bits in the coda to the series that suggest he might have stayed in touch with the Culpers: at one point Abe quotes (slightly paraphrased) Edmund's comment to Abigail about spies standing up for each other, and when he's speaking of Edmund's future fate in his letter to Thomas, he describes Hershel as "the astronomer you admire so much" - which could just be a slight crossing of wires in the script somewhere, but also suggests that Thomas might have heard about Hershel from a certain astronomer we know.
> 
> THEY WILL BE PEN PALS, DAMMIT.


End file.
